Abstract
Exposure of growing Bacillus subtilis cultures to penicillin has no observable effect on the nitrogen and phosphorus content of the whole cells and only a small effect on the nitrogen and phosphorus content of the cell-wall fraction. Muramic acid, glucosamine, alanine, glutamic acid, diaminopimelic acid and ammonia are the major nitrogenous components of B. subtilis cell walls, accounting for nearly all of the cell-wall nitrogen and amounting to 52% of the cell-wall mass. Incorporation of carbon from 14C-labelled sugar in the medium into cell constituents was studied. Incorporation into whole cells was inhibited 20% and incorporation into cell walls was inhibited 88%. Incorporation into cell protein was not inhibited. The specific activity of various cell-wall components showed that penicillin inhibited incorporation of muramic and diaminopimelic acids into cell wall more completely than incorporation of other cell-wall components.
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